Programmers and Depression
This is a translation (and quite free) of the 2013 performance of a Ruby programmer named Greg Bauges, dedicated to depression and mental disorders among programmers. The speech is old, but the problem is eternal. Here is the video from the conference itself:
So let's start, my name is Greg. I work for Table XI in Chicago. We are something like a web studio of 30 people. I programmed most of my life, starting with TRS-80 when I was only 6 or 7 years old. There were cassettes and Basic, I even remember the monthly magazine 3-2-1 Contact, which was printed on the back cover of the program for BASIC. Then I could not copy-paste and I just had to reprint the program to start, forcing the colors on the screen to change and doing other obscenities ... I spent most of my life trying to sit on two chairs - programming and working with clients. And I also have bipolar disorder of the second type (BAR2) and ADD , and today I want to tell you my story, friends. To tell you why we should pay attention to depression and mental illness at such meetings, conferences, and in conversations with colleagues.
')
You may have heard about bipolar disorder of the first type (BAR1), which is characterized by a cyclical change of manic and depressive states. This means that you are plying between the manic stage on the rise and the depressive stage on the decline. The manic stage can be accompanied by euphoria, but at the same time it is incredibly destructive - because it is characterized by great impulsiveness, and during such a period people often make rash decisions. With BAR1, it is also a constant throwing between these two states - euphoria is replaced by decay very often. My BAR2 is characterized by longer state change cycles.
For me, it usually looks like a slow creep down for 4-12 weeks. It feels like it is trying to drive on a steep slope covered with gravel - no matter how hard you pedal, you still slide down. Of course, there was little pleasure in it. I first noticed it in my fifth year of study at the University of Illinois, my finish circle, so to speak. True finish he for me did not. I just broke up with my girlfriend and finally for the first time in my life I began to live alone - no roommates. I was threatened with expulsion and things took a nasty turn. I have never been a good student, but I was still smart enough to be like that. It struck me in the last year of study: it suddenly became clear that in order to pass the exam in linear algebra, you still need to understand what the phrase “linear algebra” means. And despite the fact that I took this course twice, I still can not explain to you what it is.
It became obvious that I simply wouldn’t pull it, that I would not get a diploma, and that I don’t know how to tell about it to my parents either. And I certainly couldn’t imagine how to accept the fact that everyone around would graduate, but I wouldn’t. A friend of mine said about me: "Greg is one of the most intelligent guys that I came across, but apparently he is also one of the laziest." And I believed it, I had no other excuses. After all, how did everything usually happen? I slept all day without coming to class, but at the same time I knew that I would be smart enough to attend classes and do my homework. But I just did not do it - and it looked like laziness to me. I sleep a lot when I am in a depressive phase - for me this is the most obvious symptom. At that time, the best part of the day fell on the period when I was unconscious, not having any contact with the reality, which was piled on with all its weight. Yes, even physically it was hard to get out of bed - it was easier to wait out the alarm clock.
And so I stopped attending classes and going to work. I had a job with part-time amusement and with such a free schedule that they did not immediately realize that I scored for this job. And I also had a wonderful colleague, a wonderful friend who still had a business to me - he sent me several letters, trying to find out what was happening to me. I did not answer the letters - I simply did not know how to tell him about my condition. And once on Tuesday, about two o'clock in the afternoon, he called me several times - but I ignored the phone, continuing to lie in bed. And then I heard him knocking on the door, saying something like, "Hey Greg, this is Bill." For my part there was something like: “Damn. It's okay You just need to lie quietly - he does not need to know that I am here. And in general, where did he get that at 2 o'clock on a weekday I can be here? ”But then the door handle began to turn - not that I’d bother with closing the doors during that period. However, I did not blunder and managed to gently slide into the gap between the bed and the wall. I threw a blanket over myself and held my breath, waiting for Bill to go around the living room, the study, look around the bedroom, and, finally, walked away. I was ashamed of that.
By the way, I failed the exams. I returned to Indianapolis and began living with my parents, earning a freelance as well. Actually, I also enrolled in the college there, but after six months it became obvious to me that I would not morally or physically master it. I then lied to my parents, saying that I had successfully graduated, but I confessed to them just a couple of years ago.
It was unbearable - even when I wanted to, no, even when I managed to force myself to come in pairs, I still could not concentrate. Even when I wanted to perform some task for a client, I could not. Unless of course the time was 2 am the night before the project was completed. But when I could focus, I worked quite well. But I just could not control myself. The Bible had this verse: “For I don’t understand what I’m doing: because I’m not doing what I want and what I hate, I’m doing it.” And my feelings are described more precisely than this. Whatever I was doing, however simple the task was, it was like walking under water, I just could not bring myself. I wondered: “Why is this happening? Why can't I control myself? ”And like any decent person who has a question and a desire to get an answer to it, I have resorted to the help of Google. Once at 2 am I began to google out of despair at the request of "chronic procrastination." And now I am studying information about Attention Deficit Syndrome (ADD).
I always joked that I had ADD, but I didn’t seriously think so, because this ADD is the excuse that lazy people use when they don’t want to work normally. And I'm not like that. But then I came across the book “The Edison Gene,” by Thom Hartmann, whose message was that ADD is genetically determined. Both inventors and creative people have it. Pretty common thing. According to the book, tens of thousands of years ago, we had hunters and farmers (well, or gatherers). And in order to be a good hunter, you had to explore a new territory and have the ability to constantly switch attention from one object to another, suddenly in sight. But in order to be a good farmer, one must become skilled in doing the routine of things day after day. Methodology is important here. None of the skills are better than the other, it just happened that over time, civilization grew, and farmers began to bring more benefits because of the ability to provide a large population with food. And at the same time, the hunters thoroughly mowed each other during the wars, so that their share of their genes in the genetic pool fell faster. Gradually, their share in the population has fallen, and now only about 10-20% of people can be diagnosed with ADD. The book says that people with ADD have non-linear thinking, and without it, they have linear thinking.
And what seemed to me the most encouraging is that those symptoms that we attribute to ADD, such as inability to focus, procrastination, indecision, all these symptoms disappear in conditions of high tension. Approximately 2 am to complete the project. At the same time, the same symptoms in stress conditions are manifested in people with linear thinking. And it was encouraging - it meant that I did not have problems with my head, but that we built a society where dangerous situations are rare. To be a decent member of such a society, you need a willingness to work every day at a set time, you need the ability to pay bills and monitor the status of your checkbook.
I more or less accepted this. It took about a year after reading this and other books, before I finally went to someone for help. Just because I tried to solve my problems on my own, just putting more of these forces.
But still I decided. I went to a psychologist and passed the test. She checked and said: "Yes, you definitely have ADD, you won." And I mentally exclaimed: "Yeah!" But she immediately added: "But it looks like you also have a second type of bipolar disorder." And I thought: " Nooooo ... no. Look, I will take ADD, and you keep bipolar disorder for yourself, because it’s for the sick, and I’m not like that. ”And after that I continued to live for another 2 years as before.
Finally, I went to a psychiatrist and told him about my ADD. He explained to me that there are 2 types of drugs that can help me. One of them must be taken systemically and after 2 weeks there will be a tangible result. The second was a stimulant, the effect of which should be after 15 minutes. Of course, I chose the second option. And the doctor was right. After 15 minutes, my world narrowed only to what was before my eyes. For the first time in my life I was able to make a list of items A, B, C, focus on it and perform them in order. That was exciting.
But the depression remained. And it even worsened because the medications helped me focus. And if the main subject of my thoughts was how I feel bad, then the medications just helped me concentrate on my depression.
My whole life obeyed the same pattern, because I refused to believe that it is not external factors like my place of life or work that make me unhappy, but something inside of me. When I was in college, I cursed him, said that it was not for me, that without him I would have been happy. Then, when I returned to Indianapolis, after a year of living there, I thought that well, to hell with this life with my parents, I'd rather go to Chicago. And here I am in Chicago. I got a job there as a programmer in a startup of five people, great work for me. The first few months I can say burst. But then after 11-12 months of work, I told myself that this place also sucks. I'm unhappy again, I guess I just blew out on the same technology. Said - done, I got the job of a realtor. And it was great - I paid attention to all the number of transactions for several months. But the situation began to deteriorate again.
Around this time I met a guy named Josh Golden, right when I played poker, and I spent a lot of time on it. He was the director of Table XI. And we became pretty good friends throughout the year. He appreciated my combined experience in programming and sales and said: “You know, as soon as you get tired of doing the current work, let me know.” And then, one fine day, I finished my work. I wrote to him, "Hey, if you're still interested, then I'm ready." And about 6 weeks later, I started working in Table XI.
That day I had exactly one dollar and 70 cents in my bank account in my pocket, because the work as a realtor was no longer so good for me, I was almost not functional. For me and my roommate, the hot water was turned off for a month for non-payment, so I washed every day under cold water. I somehow got to work and didn’t really know what I could afford for lunch, but that day I found out that Table XI feeds the staff at my own expense. We have a cook today, and then Josh just sent me a message asking me which sandwich to order. Getting started in Table XI was great. I mean perfect. It was just the company I dreamed of, even when I was just moving to Chicago. There were only six of us in the office. There were many days when I felt like the dumbest worker among all, and it was great. We worked on interesting projects and we had a cool office in the attic, everything was cool and I worked just fine.
And now six, seven, eight months, a year later, everything repeats. Again, the game with one gate - my gate. I went through a series of weeks, when I didn’t show up at work until dinner, I woke the alarm clock every day. It all came to a logical final one Friday. We just had a big project that was completely tied to me. I stayed in the office all night trying to work on it. It was a complete failure - I could not concentrate on work. And he went home, promising himself to get up early. Alarm clock I overslept. Josh just flew to Italy that morning to make an offer to his future wife, he lived a quarter below me. And here again, I wake up from the fact that someone enters my room, asking, “Hey Greg, are you here?” But this time I did not have a saving doorway between the bed and the wall.
On the same day I made a visit to a psychiatrist. It became clear to me that what kept me from visiting a specialist was my pride. I could not admit that something was wrong with me. And then I said to myself: “Suppose I can’t control it, but at least I will only be causing problems to myself, and everything will be fine.” I perfectly understood that I let everyone around because I avoided outside help. By the way, 4 hours after visiting a psychiatrist, I met my future wife Rachel.
The psychiatrist said, “Yes, we have treatment for that too. According to the symptoms you have exactly BAR2. The drug that we have from this, lamotrigine, almost always helps. The truth is that occasionally there are side effects, such as an anal rash. ”To which I reasonably noticed that acne on my ass will not make me more uncountable than it is now. But fortunately everything turned out okay, at least for now. In general, my condition has since stabilized markedly.
Getting out of this abyss took time. And not that everything was rosy after I started taking medications, not that I didn’t have days when the depression fell on me. They were, but now it was the days, not the weeks and months, during which I was actually disabled.
I am incredibly lucky - my drugs worked the first time, I had medical insurance, I had someone to ask for help. Table XI did not fire me, although it would not hurt to do it more than once. So I still work here 6 years later. I met my wife, who helped me out.
But many other people with the same diagnosis are not so lucky. It is estimated that about 5% of people suffer from bipolar disorder. 10-25% die because of him, and every third owner has attempted suicide at least once in his life.
And then you? If bipolar arrays are only 5% of people, then it seems to me that among programmers there are all 75%. Here are some of the individual symptoms of bipolar disorder:
Last fall, a programmer, Kaleb Korman, came to us for an interview. His resume was impressive, he worked in the top three companies that specialized in Rails, well, from those that were in Chicago. True, in each of them he worked for no more than a year, which raised some questions. But we hired him, and he was good. I worked together with him, in general he was one of the first with whom I had to work closely. I learned a lot from him - he was a rare type of people who are not only talented, but also good teachers.
He taught me to understand the code and identify the one that was with a smell. He told me about the Pry debugger, even tried to teach me Vim, but somehow it did not work. Before that, I didn’t work closely with anyone, and he finally told me about all these short names for punctuation characters, like bang instead of exclamation mark and others.
A couple of weeks after starting work with us, Kaleb began to refer to feeling unwell. And he began to appear late at work, and the excuse was a little different each time, and it was all suspiciously familiar to me. I told him my story face to face and asked what was going on.
And he answered: “Yes, you know, I sometimes think, and if I have a similar problem. Only do me what?Not that I would like to search for psychiatrists by advertisements in the newspaper. ”And I gave him the contacts of a couple of people, he called them around, although the visit was somewhat delayed - sometimes they had a full schedule. But he signed up for a visit in a couple of weeks. The day before, he had notified everyone that he was sick and that he was going to the doctor tomorrow. It was on Friday.
But only he did not reach the doctor. Later we learned that he had run out of money then, and the next day he died from an overdose. One could say for sure that this overdose was not special. He managed to call 911 and died already in the hospital, and his roommate said that judging by the poorly eaten chips and the joystick lying next to him, Kaleb was planning to survive Saturday night.
Apparently he had fought his addiction for some time. Some of his friends knew about it, but we didn't. And they said that his problem was that he was smart enough to hide it from everyone and to pretend that everything was not so bad. The saddest thing in this story is that Kaleb died of an overdose of amphetamine, and the medicine prescribed for me from ADD is dextroamphetamine. And I was almost certain that Kaleb died trying to self-medicate with his mental illness.
The history of Computer Science has similar sad pages. Alan Turing, the father of Computer Science, committed suicide under heavy government harassment. And this year we lost Aaron Schwartz in similar circumstances. In 2007, he wrote:
But we have different rules for perceiving diseases related to the brain, not like for diseases of all other organs. Which is ironic, because the brain is the most complex organ. And until now, many of us are reluctant to use the achievements of modern medicine in its treatment.
It seems that this is especially true for programmers, because we spend most of our lives being appreciated for how well our brain works. But the idea that he may be acting up is undermining our identity and self-esteem.
If you are confronted with the problems described, then you probably don’t burn with the desire to go to the doctor or throw pills, and I can understand why. Meanwhile, as I self-diagnosed ADD and began to look for a doctor a year passed. It took me 2 years to ensure that, after the doctor diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, I finally began to undergo treatment from him. I was afraid that it would damage that part of my brain, thanks to which I succeed in my work, I was afraid of losing my creativity.
And yes, it is true. Now my brain works differently. And I program differently. The dance of thoughts no longer devastates me, I no longer need to sit all night long and use my tongs to pull the code out of my head piece by piece. I now look more like a turtle. I can be measured, I have an objective look at ideas and the order of their occurrence, and I control them. And most importantly, now I am responsible and you can rely on me. Just the way I could not describe myself before.
To visit a psychotherapist or psychiatrist is to brand me, but I do not understand this. Michael Jordan has a trainer, Tiger Woods too. So why then do you have to give up an assistant, whose job is to listen to you silently and give advice like “try to do it a little differently”?
To find a psychotherapist is hard, they are still much more technically backward than we are. They are more accustomed to talking on the phone rather than email. If you visit my blog , there will be links to some resources that are worth a look. Alas, I am not local, so I can not give any recommendations for people living here. But the blog has some information that will help you find the right person.
And if that information does not give anything, then just ask people about it. If you can't find anyone, ask me. If you feel that you have encountered the problems described, just let your friends know about it. Well, if you are faced with this problem, you can subtly hint to people about it. And you will be surprised how many people will answer: "Yes, I have the same trouble."
And if everything is already sad and you don’t see any improvements, just know that 10 years ago when I was in college, then I fell asleep and prayed to God not to wake up in the morning. 6 years ago I had one dollar in my pocket and there was no hot water in the apartment. And today I am speaking at the Mountain West Ruby conference, and my beautiful wife is sitting in the front row. Everything can get better. We just have to talk more about this.
I have a mailing address in my profile, please, do not be too lazy to get false mail, and describe what can be done with you during such depressive periods. You are lost, there is no connection, the project is worth it. Perhaps at such times you can work a couple of hours a day, sometimes even this is at least something. Perhaps you will master at least a simple chore of writing documentation. I can’t think of other reasons, when a person dumps in the middle of a project, when money is not received, you put a lot of effort, but there are no prerequisites for not paying or an idiot customer. At least write how soon you usually return to the line. If you do not mind, then I will publish what you said here, so you have a chance to help others with similar problems and not spoil your reputation.
So let's start, my name is Greg. I work for Table XI in Chicago. We are something like a web studio of 30 people. I programmed most of my life, starting with TRS-80 when I was only 6 or 7 years old. There were cassettes and Basic, I even remember the monthly magazine 3-2-1 Contact, which was printed on the back cover of the program for BASIC. Then I could not copy-paste and I just had to reprint the program to start, forcing the colors on the screen to change and doing other obscenities ... I spent most of my life trying to sit on two chairs - programming and working with clients. And I also have bipolar disorder of the second type (BAR2) and ADD , and today I want to tell you my story, friends. To tell you why we should pay attention to depression and mental illness at such meetings, conferences, and in conversations with colleagues.
')
You may have heard about bipolar disorder of the first type (BAR1), which is characterized by a cyclical change of manic and depressive states. This means that you are plying between the manic stage on the rise and the depressive stage on the decline. The manic stage can be accompanied by euphoria, but at the same time it is incredibly destructive - because it is characterized by great impulsiveness, and during such a period people often make rash decisions. With BAR1, it is also a constant throwing between these two states - euphoria is replaced by decay very often. My BAR2 is characterized by longer state change cycles.
For me, it usually looks like a slow creep down for 4-12 weeks. It feels like it is trying to drive on a steep slope covered with gravel - no matter how hard you pedal, you still slide down. Of course, there was little pleasure in it. I first noticed it in my fifth year of study at the University of Illinois, my finish circle, so to speak. True finish he for me did not. I just broke up with my girlfriend and finally for the first time in my life I began to live alone - no roommates. I was threatened with expulsion and things took a nasty turn. I have never been a good student, but I was still smart enough to be like that. It struck me in the last year of study: it suddenly became clear that in order to pass the exam in linear algebra, you still need to understand what the phrase “linear algebra” means. And despite the fact that I took this course twice, I still can not explain to you what it is.
It became obvious that I simply wouldn’t pull it, that I would not get a diploma, and that I don’t know how to tell about it to my parents either. And I certainly couldn’t imagine how to accept the fact that everyone around would graduate, but I wouldn’t. A friend of mine said about me: "Greg is one of the most intelligent guys that I came across, but apparently he is also one of the laziest." And I believed it, I had no other excuses. After all, how did everything usually happen? I slept all day without coming to class, but at the same time I knew that I would be smart enough to attend classes and do my homework. But I just did not do it - and it looked like laziness to me. I sleep a lot when I am in a depressive phase - for me this is the most obvious symptom. At that time, the best part of the day fell on the period when I was unconscious, not having any contact with the reality, which was piled on with all its weight. Yes, even physically it was hard to get out of bed - it was easier to wait out the alarm clock.
And so I stopped attending classes and going to work. I had a job with part-time amusement and with such a free schedule that they did not immediately realize that I scored for this job. And I also had a wonderful colleague, a wonderful friend who still had a business to me - he sent me several letters, trying to find out what was happening to me. I did not answer the letters - I simply did not know how to tell him about my condition. And once on Tuesday, about two o'clock in the afternoon, he called me several times - but I ignored the phone, continuing to lie in bed. And then I heard him knocking on the door, saying something like, "Hey Greg, this is Bill." For my part there was something like: “Damn. It's okay You just need to lie quietly - he does not need to know that I am here. And in general, where did he get that at 2 o'clock on a weekday I can be here? ”But then the door handle began to turn - not that I’d bother with closing the doors during that period. However, I did not blunder and managed to gently slide into the gap between the bed and the wall. I threw a blanket over myself and held my breath, waiting for Bill to go around the living room, the study, look around the bedroom, and, finally, walked away. I was ashamed of that.
By the way, I failed the exams. I returned to Indianapolis and began living with my parents, earning a freelance as well. Actually, I also enrolled in the college there, but after six months it became obvious to me that I would not morally or physically master it. I then lied to my parents, saying that I had successfully graduated, but I confessed to them just a couple of years ago.
It was unbearable - even when I wanted to, no, even when I managed to force myself to come in pairs, I still could not concentrate. Even when I wanted to perform some task for a client, I could not. Unless of course the time was 2 am the night before the project was completed. But when I could focus, I worked quite well. But I just could not control myself. The Bible had this verse: “For I don’t understand what I’m doing: because I’m not doing what I want and what I hate, I’m doing it.” And my feelings are described more precisely than this. Whatever I was doing, however simple the task was, it was like walking under water, I just could not bring myself. I wondered: “Why is this happening? Why can't I control myself? ”And like any decent person who has a question and a desire to get an answer to it, I have resorted to the help of Google. Once at 2 am I began to google out of despair at the request of "chronic procrastination." And now I am studying information about Attention Deficit Syndrome (ADD).
I always joked that I had ADD, but I didn’t seriously think so, because this ADD is the excuse that lazy people use when they don’t want to work normally. And I'm not like that. But then I came across the book “The Edison Gene,” by Thom Hartmann, whose message was that ADD is genetically determined. Both inventors and creative people have it. Pretty common thing. According to the book, tens of thousands of years ago, we had hunters and farmers (well, or gatherers). And in order to be a good hunter, you had to explore a new territory and have the ability to constantly switch attention from one object to another, suddenly in sight. But in order to be a good farmer, one must become skilled in doing the routine of things day after day. Methodology is important here. None of the skills are better than the other, it just happened that over time, civilization grew, and farmers began to bring more benefits because of the ability to provide a large population with food. And at the same time, the hunters thoroughly mowed each other during the wars, so that their share of their genes in the genetic pool fell faster. Gradually, their share in the population has fallen, and now only about 10-20% of people can be diagnosed with ADD. The book says that people with ADD have non-linear thinking, and without it, they have linear thinking.
And what seemed to me the most encouraging is that those symptoms that we attribute to ADD, such as inability to focus, procrastination, indecision, all these symptoms disappear in conditions of high tension. Approximately 2 am to complete the project. At the same time, the same symptoms in stress conditions are manifested in people with linear thinking. And it was encouraging - it meant that I did not have problems with my head, but that we built a society where dangerous situations are rare. To be a decent member of such a society, you need a willingness to work every day at a set time, you need the ability to pay bills and monitor the status of your checkbook.
I more or less accepted this. It took about a year after reading this and other books, before I finally went to someone for help. Just because I tried to solve my problems on my own, just putting more of these forces.
But still I decided. I went to a psychologist and passed the test. She checked and said: "Yes, you definitely have ADD, you won." And I mentally exclaimed: "Yeah!" But she immediately added: "But it looks like you also have a second type of bipolar disorder." And I thought: " Nooooo ... no. Look, I will take ADD, and you keep bipolar disorder for yourself, because it’s for the sick, and I’m not like that. ”And after that I continued to live for another 2 years as before.
Finally, I went to a psychiatrist and told him about my ADD. He explained to me that there are 2 types of drugs that can help me. One of them must be taken systemically and after 2 weeks there will be a tangible result. The second was a stimulant, the effect of which should be after 15 minutes. Of course, I chose the second option. And the doctor was right. After 15 minutes, my world narrowed only to what was before my eyes. For the first time in my life I was able to make a list of items A, B, C, focus on it and perform them in order. That was exciting.
But the depression remained. And it even worsened because the medications helped me focus. And if the main subject of my thoughts was how I feel bad, then the medications just helped me concentrate on my depression.
My whole life obeyed the same pattern, because I refused to believe that it is not external factors like my place of life or work that make me unhappy, but something inside of me. When I was in college, I cursed him, said that it was not for me, that without him I would have been happy. Then, when I returned to Indianapolis, after a year of living there, I thought that well, to hell with this life with my parents, I'd rather go to Chicago. And here I am in Chicago. I got a job there as a programmer in a startup of five people, great work for me. The first few months I can say burst. But then after 11-12 months of work, I told myself that this place also sucks. I'm unhappy again, I guess I just blew out on the same technology. Said - done, I got the job of a realtor. And it was great - I paid attention to all the number of transactions for several months. But the situation began to deteriorate again.
Around this time I met a guy named Josh Golden, right when I played poker, and I spent a lot of time on it. He was the director of Table XI. And we became pretty good friends throughout the year. He appreciated my combined experience in programming and sales and said: “You know, as soon as you get tired of doing the current work, let me know.” And then, one fine day, I finished my work. I wrote to him, "Hey, if you're still interested, then I'm ready." And about 6 weeks later, I started working in Table XI.
That day I had exactly one dollar and 70 cents in my bank account in my pocket, because the work as a realtor was no longer so good for me, I was almost not functional. For me and my roommate, the hot water was turned off for a month for non-payment, so I washed every day under cold water. I somehow got to work and didn’t really know what I could afford for lunch, but that day I found out that Table XI feeds the staff at my own expense. We have a cook today, and then Josh just sent me a message asking me which sandwich to order. Getting started in Table XI was great. I mean perfect. It was just the company I dreamed of, even when I was just moving to Chicago. There were only six of us in the office. There were many days when I felt like the dumbest worker among all, and it was great. We worked on interesting projects and we had a cool office in the attic, everything was cool and I worked just fine.
And now six, seven, eight months, a year later, everything repeats. Again, the game with one gate - my gate. I went through a series of weeks, when I didn’t show up at work until dinner, I woke the alarm clock every day. It all came to a logical final one Friday. We just had a big project that was completely tied to me. I stayed in the office all night trying to work on it. It was a complete failure - I could not concentrate on work. And he went home, promising himself to get up early. Alarm clock I overslept. Josh just flew to Italy that morning to make an offer to his future wife, he lived a quarter below me. And here again, I wake up from the fact that someone enters my room, asking, “Hey Greg, are you here?” But this time I did not have a saving doorway between the bed and the wall.
On the same day I made a visit to a psychiatrist. It became clear to me that what kept me from visiting a specialist was my pride. I could not admit that something was wrong with me. And then I said to myself: “Suppose I can’t control it, but at least I will only be causing problems to myself, and everything will be fine.” I perfectly understood that I let everyone around because I avoided outside help. By the way, 4 hours after visiting a psychiatrist, I met my future wife Rachel.
The psychiatrist said, “Yes, we have treatment for that too. According to the symptoms you have exactly BAR2. The drug that we have from this, lamotrigine, almost always helps. The truth is that occasionally there are side effects, such as an anal rash. ”To which I reasonably noticed that acne on my ass will not make me more uncountable than it is now. But fortunately everything turned out okay, at least for now. In general, my condition has since stabilized markedly.
Getting out of this abyss took time. And not that everything was rosy after I started taking medications, not that I didn’t have days when the depression fell on me. They were, but now it was the days, not the weeks and months, during which I was actually disabled.
I am incredibly lucky - my drugs worked the first time, I had medical insurance, I had someone to ask for help. Table XI did not fire me, although it would not hurt to do it more than once. So I still work here 6 years later. I met my wife, who helped me out.
But many other people with the same diagnosis are not so lucky. It is estimated that about 5% of people suffer from bipolar disorder. 10-25% die because of him, and every third owner has attempted suicide at least once in his life.
And then you? If bipolar arrays are only 5% of people, then it seems to me that among programmers there are all 75%. Here are some of the individual symptoms of bipolar disorder:
- hyperconcentration. Of course, sometimes it is hard to concentrate, but if it works, the whole world disappears around. You can sit like this for 12 hours and peel the keys.
- The randomness of thinking - a bunch of thoughts rushes to race.
- Choked speech - when a bunch of thoughts from the previous paragraph tries to find a way out through a narrow mouth opening.
- Social isolation.
- Irregular sleep, especially bouts of insomnia, which makes it difficult to sleep at night and almost impossible to wake up in the morning.
- Pretentiousness - to assume that the rules do not apply to you, that you are better than others, that you can solve problems that others cannot do.
Last fall, a programmer, Kaleb Korman, came to us for an interview. His resume was impressive, he worked in the top three companies that specialized in Rails, well, from those that were in Chicago. True, in each of them he worked for no more than a year, which raised some questions. But we hired him, and he was good. I worked together with him, in general he was one of the first with whom I had to work closely. I learned a lot from him - he was a rare type of people who are not only talented, but also good teachers.
He taught me to understand the code and identify the one that was with a smell. He told me about the Pry debugger, even tried to teach me Vim, but somehow it did not work. Before that, I didn’t work closely with anyone, and he finally told me about all these short names for punctuation characters, like bang instead of exclamation mark and others.
A couple of weeks after starting work with us, Kaleb began to refer to feeling unwell. And he began to appear late at work, and the excuse was a little different each time, and it was all suspiciously familiar to me. I told him my story face to face and asked what was going on.
And he answered: “Yes, you know, I sometimes think, and if I have a similar problem. Only do me what?Not that I would like to search for psychiatrists by advertisements in the newspaper. ”And I gave him the contacts of a couple of people, he called them around, although the visit was somewhat delayed - sometimes they had a full schedule. But he signed up for a visit in a couple of weeks. The day before, he had notified everyone that he was sick and that he was going to the doctor tomorrow. It was on Friday.
But only he did not reach the doctor. Later we learned that he had run out of money then, and the next day he died from an overdose. One could say for sure that this overdose was not special. He managed to call 911 and died already in the hospital, and his roommate said that judging by the poorly eaten chips and the joystick lying next to him, Kaleb was planning to survive Saturday night.
Apparently he had fought his addiction for some time. Some of his friends knew about it, but we didn't. And they said that his problem was that he was smart enough to hide it from everyone and to pretend that everything was not so bad. The saddest thing in this story is that Kaleb died of an overdose of amphetamine, and the medicine prescribed for me from ADD is dextroamphetamine. And I was almost certain that Kaleb died trying to self-medicate with his mental illness.
The history of Computer Science has similar sad pages. Alan Turing, the father of Computer Science, committed suicide under heavy government harassment. And this year we lost Aaron Schwartz in similar circumstances. In 2007, he wrote:
. . . , — . , , , .Shame is what kills us. Shame and prejudice associated with mental disorders is the cause of the suffering of our colleagues and friends. Now, if I got up and said that I had cancer, I would not be afraid that someone would think: “Oh, that's all he screwed.” If I said that I was taking insulin, no one would say, “You Are you not afraid that you will get addicted until the end of your life? ” No one will think that I will use it as a crutch. If I broke my leg, no one will say: “Just work harder.” Everyone will exclaim: “Blow to the doctor!”
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But we have different rules for perceiving diseases related to the brain, not like for diseases of all other organs. Which is ironic, because the brain is the most complex organ. And until now, many of us are reluctant to use the achievements of modern medicine in its treatment.
It seems that this is especially true for programmers, because we spend most of our lives being appreciated for how well our brain works. But the idea that he may be acting up is undermining our identity and self-esteem.
If you are confronted with the problems described, then you probably don’t burn with the desire to go to the doctor or throw pills, and I can understand why. Meanwhile, as I self-diagnosed ADD and began to look for a doctor a year passed. It took me 2 years to ensure that, after the doctor diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, I finally began to undergo treatment from him. I was afraid that it would damage that part of my brain, thanks to which I succeed in my work, I was afraid of losing my creativity.
And yes, it is true. Now my brain works differently. And I program differently. The dance of thoughts no longer devastates me, I no longer need to sit all night long and use my tongs to pull the code out of my head piece by piece. I now look more like a turtle. I can be measured, I have an objective look at ideas and the order of their occurrence, and I control them. And most importantly, now I am responsible and you can rely on me. Just the way I could not describe myself before.
To visit a psychotherapist or psychiatrist is to brand me, but I do not understand this. Michael Jordan has a trainer, Tiger Woods too. So why then do you have to give up an assistant, whose job is to listen to you silently and give advice like “try to do it a little differently”?
To find a psychotherapist is hard, they are still much more technically backward than we are. They are more accustomed to talking on the phone rather than email. If you visit my blog , there will be links to some resources that are worth a look. Alas, I am not local, so I can not give any recommendations for people living here. But the blog has some information that will help you find the right person.
And if that information does not give anything, then just ask people about it. If you can't find anyone, ask me. If you feel that you have encountered the problems described, just let your friends know about it. Well, if you are faced with this problem, you can subtly hint to people about it. And you will be surprised how many people will answer: "Yes, I have the same trouble."
And if everything is already sad and you don’t see any improvements, just know that 10 years ago when I was in college, then I fell asleep and prayed to God not to wake up in the morning. 6 years ago I had one dollar in my pocket and there was no hot water in the apartment. And today I am speaking at the Mountain West Ruby conference, and my beautiful wife is sitting in the front row. Everything can get better. We just have to talk more about this.
If you suffer from this kind of disorders
I have a mailing address in my profile, please, do not be too lazy to get false mail, and describe what can be done with you during such depressive periods. You are lost, there is no connection, the project is worth it. Perhaps at such times you can work a couple of hours a day, sometimes even this is at least something. Perhaps you will master at least a simple chore of writing documentation. I can’t think of other reasons, when a person dumps in the middle of a project, when money is not received, you put a lot of effort, but there are no prerequisites for not paying or an idiot customer. At least write how soon you usually return to the line. If you do not mind, then I will publish what you said here, so you have a chance to help others with similar problems and not spoil your reputation.
Readers' letters
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/260249/
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